by Tad Williams
“Wake up!” He did his best to shake Chaven, who was twice his size. “Where is my boy? Where is Flint?”
Chaven groaned and rolled over, then struggled until he could sit by himself. “What?” The physician looked around his room as if he had not seen it before. “Flint?”
“Yes, Flint! I left him with you. Where is he? What happened?”
Chaven looked blank. “Happened? Nothing happened. Flint, you say? He was here?” He shook his head slowly, like a weary horse trying to dislodge a biting fly. “No, wait—he was here, of course he was. But . . . but I do not remember what happened. Is he gone?”
Chert almost threw the wet rag at him in exasperation. He quickly searched the small chamber to make sure the boy was not hiding somewhere. He did not find him, but in one corner of the room he discovered a small hand mirror and a stump of candle lying on the floor. He smelled the wick. It had only recently been extinguished.
“What is this?” he demanded of the confused physician. “Did you get up to some of your mirror tricks with him? Did you frighten him into running away?”
Chaven looked both affronted and anxious. “I can’t remember, to tell the truth. But I would never hurt or frighten a child, Chert—you should know that.”
Chert remembered the boy’s cries of terror the last time the fat physician had tried out his mirror-magics. “Pfah! He’s gone, that’s all I know. Have you no idea at all where he might be? How long he’s been gone?”
But Chaven was mystified—and useless. He could only look from one corner of the room to another, rubbing his eyes as though the light in the dark room was too bright.
Chert was hurrying through the halls when he suddenly remembered the library. Flint had already got them both into trouble for going there once. What more likely place for him to end up this time?
To his immense relief he found the boy slumped in what seemed like ordinary childish sleep at one of the ancient tables, his head cradled on an irreplaceable book, a centuries-old collection of shallow carvings on sheets of mica thinner than parchment. As Chert lifted the boy’s head to slide the pages from beneath him he glanced at the antique writing. He could not read it—it was too old, too strange—but it reminded him of the scratchings he had seen on the walls deep in the Mysteries. What was the boy doing with it? Did he have any sense of what he was up to? Flint acted sometimes as if he was ten times his true age, but at others he seemed nothing more than the child he was.
“Wake up, boy,” he said gently. He could forgive almost anything as long as he didn’t have to tell Opal he’d lost their child. “Come, now.”
Flint lifted his head and looked around, then closed his eyes again as if to go back to sleep. He was far too big for Chert to carry—he was taller than his foster father, now—so Chert had to pull on his arm until the boy got to his feet and reluctantly allowed himself to be led out of the library and back across the temple to the room they shared. For once they seemed to be in luck: Vansen was apparently keeping Brother Nickel and the other monks busy with the temple’s defense. Flint’s return to the library had apparently gone undetected.
“Why did you do that, boy?” he demanded. “The brothers said to stay out of there—what were you doing? And what happened in Chaven’s room?”
Flint shook his head sleepily. “I don’t know.” He walked on in silence for several paces, then suddenly said, “Sometimes . . . sometimes I think I know things. Sometimes I do know things—important things! And then . . . and then I don’t.” To Chert’s astonishment, the boy abruptly burst into tears, something Chert had never, ever seen him do. “I just don’t know, Father! I don’t understand!”
Chert wrapped his arms around Flint, hugging this strange creature, this alien child, feeling the boy shake with helpless sorrow. There was nothing else he could do.
He had just got Flint settled in bed when someone rapped at the door. Wearily, Chert got up and opened it to reveal Chaven, wide-eyed in the dark hallway.
“Did you find the boy?” he asked.
“Yes. He is well. He went to the library. I have just put him to bed.” He stepped back, beckoned the physician to enter. “Come in and I’ll see if I can find us some mossbrew. Do you remember what happened?”
“I cannot,” said Chaven. “In truth, I came to bring you a message. Ferras Vansen has sent to say that they have learned how to speak with the Funderling they captured.”
Chert lifted an eyebrow. “I am a Funderling. That murderous creature is a drow.”
Chaven waved his hand. “Of course, of course. Your pardon. In any case, will you come? Captain Vansen asked for you.”
He shook his head. “No. I must stay with my boy. Too many things have called me away from him. Besides, there is nothing I can do there to help Vansen. If he truly needs me I will come to him tomorrow.” He smiled sourly. “Unless the Qar murder us all before then, of course.”
The physician didn’t know quite how to take this. “Of course.”
When Chaven had left Chert went to look in on the boy. Flint’s face was slack in sleep, mouth open, his tousled hair lighter even than citron quartz. What did all that mean? Chert wondered. He knows, but he doesn’t know?
As always, Chert could only wonder at the strange thing he and Opal had brought into their lives, this changeling boy . . . this walking mystery.
Utta pulled at the older woman’s arm, trying to hold her back, but her efforts had little effect. Together they slid and slipped in the mud of the main street. Kayyin made a languid move to help them, but they regained their balance.
“I will not be stopped, Sister.” Merolanna was breathing hard from the exertion and the cold. Before the Bridge of Thorns had begun to grow the days had actually turned warm, but since the beginning of the monstrous project the entirety of the coastline around Southmarch had been shrouded in chill wet mist, as if summer had entirely passed them by and they had tumbled straight into Dekamene or even later.
“Kayyin, help me,” Utta begged. “The dark lady will kill her.”
“Perhaps,” the Qar said. “But, see—we are all still alive. My mother seems to have lost a bit of her bloodlust in these sad, late days.”
“Are you mad, Halfling?” Merolanna said. “Lost her bloodlust! She is killing our people this moment! I can hear the screams!”
Kayyin shrugged. “I did not say she had become a different person entirely.”
Merolanna strode on, determined, smacking away Utta’s hand when the Zorian sister tried to slow her. “No! She will hear me. I will not be stopped!”
“If Snout and his fellow guards had not been called to the siege,” Kayyin said cheerfully, “you would not have gotten out the front door.”
Merolanna only showed her teeth in an expression that on someone other than a respectable dowager might have been called a snarl.
The collection of docks and harbor buildings facing the castle’s drowned causeway had become a scene of nightmarish chaos. Creatures of dozens of different shapes and sizes hurried back and forth through the fog as the vast, creaking, treelike branches of the Bridge of Thorns loomed over all like the deformed bones of a collapsing temple. Merolanna, mud now spattered halfway up her skirt, did not flinch from even the most grotesque creatures that appeared out of the murk, but stamped along like a determined soldier, headed for the black and gold tent standing by itself at the center of things.
She is brave, Utta thought, I cannot take that away from her. But the one she seeks is not some ordinary mortal to be cowed by an irate old woman. If what Kayyin said was true, the dark lady herself is older than we can imagine—the child of a god. And sweet Zoria knows that she is angry and vengeful beyond our understanding as well.
If it had not been for the strangeness of the last year, the mad things she herself had seen, Utta would have dismissed the Qar’s talk of gods and Fireflowers and immortal siblings as nonsense . . . but no other answers fit what she had seen and what was all around her this moment! For Utta Fornsdodir, who thou
ght of herself as an educated woman, one who despite her calling could glean the difference between the important truths in the old stories and the superstition and silliness of some of the tales themselves, it had been a shocking and even disheartening time.
Yasammez stood before her tent like a statue of Nightmare, all in spiked black armor, an ivory-white sword hanging naked and unsheathed at her belt. She was watching something Utta could not see in the clouded heights of the thorns and did not turn even when Duchess Merolanna stumbled to a halt in front of her and slowly, painfully, lowered herself to her knees. A thin shrieking that might have been the wind wafted over the silent tableau, but Utta knew it was not the wind. Inside the walls of Southmarch castle, the fairies were killing men, women, and children.
“I cannot take this cruelty any longer!” Merolanna’s voice, so firm only moments ago, now had a hitch that was more than fear, Utta sensed: something about dark Yasammez was enough to make the words stumble in anyone’s throat. “Why are you murdering my people? What have they done to you? Two hundred years since the last war with your kind—we had all but forgotten you even existed!”
The face of Yasammez turned slowly toward her—an emotionless mask, pale and weirdly beautiful despite the inhuman angles of its bones. “Two hundred years? ” the fairy-woman said in her harshly musical voice. “Mere moments. When you have seen the centuries flutter past as I have, then you may talk of time as if it meant something. Your people have doomed mine and now I am returning the favor. You may watch the ending or you may hide yourself away, but do not waste my time.”
“Kill me, then,” said Merolanna. The hitch in her throat was gone.
“No, Duchess!” Utta cried, but her legs suddenly felt wobbly as spring rushes and she could not move closer.
“Quiet, Sister Utta.” The duchess turned back to the angular shadow that was Yasammez. “I cannot simply watch my people die—my nieces and nephews and friends—but I cannot hide from it, either. If you understand suffering as you say you do, end mine.” She bowed her head. “Take my life, you cold thing. Torture does not befit a great lady.”
Yasammez looked at Merolanna and something like a cold smile played across her face. For a long moment they stood like characters in a play, by appearance a terrifying conqueror and a helpless victim or an executioner and condemned prisoner—but it was nothing quite so simple, Utta realized.
“You should not speak to me of suffering,” Yasammez said at last. Her voice was still rough and strange, but lower, softer. “Never. Were I to bring your loved ones here one by one and execute them in front of you, still you should not speak that word to me.”
“I don’t know what . . .” Merolanna began.
“Silence.” The word hissed like a red-hot blade thrust into cold water. “Do you know what you and your wretched kind have done to my people? Hunted us, murdered us, poisoned us like vermin. Those who survived driven into exile in the cold lands to the north, forced to draw the mantle of twilight over themselves like a child hiding beneath a blanket. Yes, you even stole the sun from us! But, cruelest jest of all, you pushed our race to the brink of destruction and then also snatched away our last chance at survival.” The pale face tilted forward, black eyes slitted. “Torture? If I could, I would torture every one of you soft mortal slugs, then burn the fat from your bodies while you screamed. Mounds of your charred bones would be your only monument.”
The dark woman’s hatred was like an icy blast of wind down a mountainside. Utta could not help herself—she let out a little noise of terror.
Yasammez turned on her as if she had noticed her for the first time. “You. You call yourself a servant of Zoria. What beside sentimental nonsense do you know of the white dove—of the true Dawnflower? What do you know of the way her father and his clan tormented her, killed her beloved, then handed her over to one of the victorious brothers as if the goddess of the first light was nothing but a spoil of war? What do you know of the way they tortured her son Crooked, the one you mayflies call Kupilas, until he was willing to give up his own life to rid the world of them? For thousands of years he has suffered to keep the world safe, agonies you and even I cannot imagine. Then think of this—you call him a god . . . but I call him Father.” Her face, the mask of rage, suddenly went as slack as the features of a corpse. “And now he is dying. My father is dying, my family is dying, my entire race is dying—and you talk to me of suffering.”
Utta’s legs buckled at last and she sank down into the mud beside Merolanna. In the moment’s hush she could again hear the cries of Yasammez’ victims across the bay, a chorus of terror that sounded like nothing so much as the screeching of distant seabirds.
The dark lady turned her back on them. “Kayyin, take these things away from me, these . . . insects. I have a war to fight. Tell them the story of how their kind stole the Fireflower and murdered my family. After that, if they still want to die, I will be happy to accommodate them.”
28
The Lonely Ones
“In the tome known as Ximander’s Book it is written that one family of the Elementals did join forces with the Qar long ago, and that they are called the Emerald Fire. According to Ximander they are a sort of royal guard to the king and queen of the fairies, like the Leopards of the Xixian Autarch.”
—from “A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand”
“THE REPOSE . . . SKRIKERS?I don’t understand.”Barrick took up the heavy oars again and began to row. The weird murk of the darklights lined the river like an arbor of old trees, dense along the bank and stretching high on either side until it finally began to thin far above their heads. “It makes no sense,” he growled at Raemon Beck, struggling to keep his voice to a whisper. “Why would the Dreamless shut themselves away for hours each day when they do not sleep? And if everyone’s inside, why would they have these skriker things guarding the streets? From what?”
Beck had dried his eyes, but he looked as if he might burst into tears again any moment; the man’s weak, puffy face made Barrick angry. “The Dreamless are fairies,” Beck said quietly, “and except for my master they aren’t kind ones. They trust no one—not even their own kind. As for the Repose, it is their law to lock themselves in, and that is what the skrikers see to. My master Qu’arus used to tell me that his people had to shut themselves away because too much wakefulness made their hearts and their thoughts sick. Before the Law of Repose many of them grew so damaged and secretive that they slaughtered their own families or their neighbors. There still are places where you can see the black ruins of estates that burned to the ground centuries ago with the family and all their servants inside, turned into funeral pyres by those who had grown tired of living . . .”
Barrick felt a disturbing moment of kinship with the Dreamless. How often had he dreamed of his own home in flames? How often had he wished for some disaster to end his pain, little caring who else might be harmed?
He rowed as quietly as he could, but the city was still as a tomb; every splash seemed certain to draw attention. The small waterway they were on came to an end, leaving them no choice but to move into a larger branch of one of the main canals. Three or four other boats were visible on the water, albeit distantly, but Barrick pulled hard on the oars and they managed to slip quickly across the wide waterway and then back onto one of the smaller side streams.
It was tiring to go so fast, though: the boat was twice as big as the sort of two-man skiffs used in Southmarch. Barrick found himself thinking of the headless blemmy that had done the work before—he wished they could have brought one of the horrible things, just to spare himself this backbreaking labor.
Barrick soon discovered that if he kept the skiff away from the darklights along the edge of the canals he could actually see fairly well, but the effect was still disturbing: out in the middle of the larger waterways was something like the shadowland twilight he had grown used to, but the banks seemed swaddled in inky black smoke. To see anything of what they were passing he had to move in c
lose, until they were within the penumbra of the darklights and his eyes became accustomed to the deep shadow. But he had no idea whether they could be seen in turn or who might be looking at them.
“We need a place to hide,” he told Beck. “Some place no one will find us while we decide what to do next.”
“There is no such place,” Beck said bleakly. “Not here. Not in Sleep.”
Barrick scowled. “And you do not know where Crooked’s Hall is, either. You are as useless as a boar’s teats . . .”
At that moment something dropped on them out of the blackness, as though the darklights themselves had spat out part of their essence. Raemon Beck threw himself down, pressing his face against the deck, but Barrick recognized the clot of shadow and its method of entrance.
“I didn’t expect to see you again, bird,” he said.
“Us didn’t expect to see you, neither . . . not alive, like.” The bird bent to groom its chest feathers. “So, how went your guesting with those kindly blue-eyed folk?”
Barrick almost laughed. “As you can see, we’ve decided to move on. The problem is, Beck here doesn’t know where Crooked’s Hall might be. We need somewhere to go where we can be safe from the Night Men. And the others . . . what did you call them, Beck? Skrikers? ”
“Quiet!” The patchwork man looked around in anxious terror. “Do not name them here where the banks are close by! You’ll summon them.”
Skurn, who had been standing on one leg at the bow of the boat while he picked something out of his toes, shook himself and fluttered a little closer to Barrick. “P’raps us could fly up and try to see somewhat for you,” he said offhandedly. “P’raps.”